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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29318427">Speak in secret alphabets</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosa_himmelblau/pseuds/rosa_himmelblau'>rosa_himmelblau</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The Roadhouse Blues [53]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Wiseguy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>penzopolis</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 09:41:37</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>13,696</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29318427</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosa_himmelblau/pseuds/rosa_himmelblau</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>They both love Sonny.</p><p>So how did it get to be such a mess?</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The Roadhouse Blues [53]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1069713</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Speak in secret alphabets</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Vinnie paced around the apartment, playing with a cigarette, flipping it through his fingers the way a baton twirler twirls a baton. It wasn't doing much for the cigarette.</p><p>He was thinking of giving them up again; he'd only started smoking because it was the cool thing to do when he was fifteen, and he'd kept it up until he started college and decided to leave all the accouterments of childhood behind. Besides, it was expensive. He'd picked it up again in not in prison, but when he was driving the stupid things across the country when he was trying to get sent to prison, and he'd started because he was bored and smoking helped keep him awake—and unlike coffee, they didn't cause the need to pull over at every rest stop along the way. He'd actually quit smoking while he was inside, in an effort to control something about his life in a situation where he had very little control. He'd pretty much succeeded, right up until Stan died.</p><p>From then on he'd been a hardcore stress/boredom smoker; either of those conditions lasting for very long would have him patting his pockets or heading to the nearest drugstore.</p><p>Sonny hated his smoking. Sonny had smoked too, for a couple of years when he was a kid, but he'd mostly quit when he started Golden Gloves. He hadn't smoked seriously again until he and Vinnie had been together for nearly a year, and then it was because he couldn't stand being around it if he wasn't doing it himself. And he never let Vinnie forget whose fault it was he'd started again. That wasn't why Vinnie was thinking of quitting, though; he just wasn't crazy about the idea of either of them getting lung cancer.</p><p>Vinnie wasn't looking forward to the evening, which was why he was thinking about smoking. The little drama they'd had the other night had been unpleasant, and Vinnie had the feeling cleaning it up was going to be even worse.</p><p>He probably should have known it would happen eventually. Tracy was expected for dinner; Sonny went out to pick up a bottle of wine; Tracy arrived while he was out. No big deal.</p><p>She was "powdering her nose" when Sonny got home, when Sonny came up behind him, stroked his hair, and when Vinnie turned around, kissed him.</p><p>That's when Tracy came out of the bathroom.</p><p>Vinnie knew he'd blushed. Sonny hadn't, but his eyes got very dangerous. He was embarrassed, which meant pissed off, which meant Watch Out.</p><p>Vinnie hadn't even tried to make conversation. He'd had the feeling all along that Tracy thought there was something going on, and after the first flush of embarrassment, she had been fine.</p><p>Sonny had been abrupt-bordering-on-rude, but it would (probably) have blown over quickly if Tracy had been smart enough to keep her mouth shut.</p><p>Maybe that wasn't fair. After all, he was her uncle, she had a right to handle her relationship with him however she thought best, and wanting it to be an honest relationship was reasonable, maybe. It was the new thing, right? Everything open, honest, aboveboard. So, she'd told him it was fine with her, she'd suspected for some time—</p><p>And ran right into Sonny's stubborn denial.</p><p>"What's fine with you?" Sonny had demanded, just daring her to say the words.</p><p>"You being with Vinnie." And Vinnie knew she wasn't going to back down. Sonny could live in a closet if he wanted, but his niece wasn't going to stand outside it and pretend it was anything but a closet. Vinnie admired her nerve, but he wished she'd knock it off. Sonny was already going to be hell to live with for the next few days, and Vinnie hoped that was all it would be. He didn't want to have to renegotiate sleeping arrangements again, though he did have thermonuclear warfare to fall back on.</p><p>"Me being with Vinnie," Sonny repeated flatly, still daring her. His bluffing skills hadn't lost a thing. "What the hell are you talking about, me being with Vinnie?"</p><p>Tracy rolled her eyes, trying not to laugh. "C'm'on, Uncle Sonny, I'm not blind."</p><p>Vinnie went into the kitchen for more coffee—</p><p>"I don't know what the fuck you're talking about!"</p><p>—thinking how nice it would be just to stay there for a day, or two, or however long it took. He carried the coffee pot into the dining room where Sonny was scowling furiously and Tracy had dug in her heels.</p><p>"Where the hell do you get off thinking—"</p><p>"Hey, Sonny, I think your tongue in my mouth might've given her a clue," Vinnie murmured, refilling Sonny's cup. He heard Tracy trying not to laugh at that.</p><p>"Shut up," Sonny snapped back.</p><p>In the old days, the homicidal look Sonny shot him would have worried Vinnie. Now he ignored it and went around to refill Tracy's cup.</p><p>"I don't know why you're acting this way." Tracy's tone was just this side of warm. "It doesn't make any difference to me. I'd love you no matter who you were sleeping with—"</p><p>Sonny's response to this was one-quarter Italian, three-quarters incoherent, and almost entirely profane. Even if what he'd been saying had been making sense, it would have been hard to follow, with Tracy yelling back at him, just as loud, if not quite as angry, yelling just to be heard, as though Sonny was listening. Yeah, you had to admire her nerve.</p><p>"I wish you'd stop treating me like a child, Uncle Sonny! I'm a grown woman, you don't have to protect me—"</p><p>"Protect you from what?" Sonny yelled back. "I don't know what the hell you're talking about!"</p><p>"Give it up, Sonny, she's got us cold, you might as well come clean—"</p><p>"Shut up!" Sonny yelled at him again, and Vinnie decided it wasn't worth it. This wasn't his battle, and Tracy wasn't going to win it, with or without him. And if he stuck around, Sonny was likely to belt him just because he could, and he couldn't hit Tracy, and he had the feeling Tracy wouldn't understand that at all.</p><p>"Yeah, well, clean up anything you break or any blood you spill," Vinnie said, putting the coffee pot down on the table. "I'm going to bed."</p><p>Sonny was back to you-stay-on-your-side-of-the-bed, I-stay-on-mine that night, and he wasn't speaking to Vinnie in the morning. He tried not speaking to Vinnie when he got home in the evening, but Vinnie pinned him against the wall and kissed him until he forgot he was playing mute, and there were no barricades in bed that night, imaginary or otherwise. And things seemed to be back to normal—at least between the two of them. Vinnie didn't know how it stood between Sonny and Tracy, and he wasn't going to ask. As long as they kept him out of the middle, it wasn't his concern.</p><p>Why he'd thought that would be possible, Vinnie didn't know.</p><p>"You're going to have to talk to her." Sonny said from the kitchen doorway where he was standing, watching Vinnie brooding and washing dishes. Instead of answering him, Vinnie tossed him a dishtowel. Sonny came over and picked up a plate to dry.</p><p>"Talk to who?" Vinnie handed him another plate.</p><p>"Talk to who. Call her up tomorrow, invite her over for dinner, I'll give you a half hour to get it all straightened out before I come home."</p><p>"Oh, yeah? And say what?" He ran a handful of silverware under the hot water. Sonny didn't answer him. "And say what?" Vinnie prodded.</p><p>"Tell her she's crazy." As though it was obvious.</p><p>"Tell her she's crazy? You really think that's going to take care of it?"</p><p>"Give her a smile and tell her she's crazy, it'll be fine."</p><p>Oh. This was hinging on Sonny's faith in his imaginary ability to charm women. He'd never been able to convince Sonny that he'd never been that successful in that particular department, and what success he did have was based on the fact that he cleaned up well and generally didn't act like as big an asshole the guys he usually hung out with, which made him look good by comparison. "If she doesn't cooperate, you want me to break one of her legs?" Sonny took the silverware out of his hand and didn't answer him. "Why do I have to do this, anyway?"</p><p>Sonny leaned close to him. "Whose mouth was it I had my tongue in again?" And he stole a kiss. "Oh, yeah, it was yours."</p><p>"Tracy, your uncle sent me to tell you you're crazy, OK?" Yeah, that's gonna work.</p><p>Sonny patted his cheek. "You just get things straightened out."</p><p>"What the hell makes you think I want to do this? You know, just because you keep handing me money doesn't mean I work for you."</p><p>"Yeah? What's it mean?"</p><p>Vinnie sighed. "I'll get back to you on that one."</p><p>Sonny laughed. "Yeah, you do that."</p><p>Three days later, when he couldn't postpone it any longer, Vinnie called Tracy and asked her to come for dinner. Tracy accepted immediately. She said she wanted to talk to Vinnie.</p><p>So much for staying out of the middle. Apparently between them, Tracy and Sonny had rented him a room in the middle, and they weren't either of them going to let him leave.</p><p>Vinnie had the feeling that nobody was going to be very interested in dinner that night, but he still had to have something ready. What was a dinner farce without the dinner? Chinese seemed like the best idea, from the place Sonny liked. What didn't get eaten that night could go in the refrigerator, assuming nobody threw it, and Vinnie wouldn't have to bust his ass getting it ready.</p><p>He wasn't looking forward to talking to Tracy. Not that she hadn't been perfectly friendly toward him since she'd moved to San Francisco. Well, maybe not friendly. Cordial. She smiled a lot, but not as though she was happy. She smiled as though she was using her smile as a decoy. She—</p><p>Mostly he'd spoken to her on the phone; mostly Sonny went to her place for dinner. Vinnie didn't know if that was deliberate or not, or if it was, whose choice it was, Sonny's or Tracy's, and he wasn't sure it mattered. Maybe he'd been wrong about that.</p><p>Dinner was scheduled for six-thirty, which meant Tracy was supposed to be there at six, which meant Vinnie would go out about five-fifteen to get the food, which meant he had the whole afternoon to pace around the apartment and think about not smoking. "Yeah, that's a real good way to spend your time." He had just about decided to go down to the garage to see if there was something he could do about the timing on the Charger; he could hear it missing, even if Sonny claimed he couldn't—which Vinnie was pretty sure just retaliation for Vinnie refusing to pretend to hear the imaginary sound Sonny's car wasn't making. But the doorbell rang. Vinnie first looked at his watch—it was just after noon—and then went to the door. Tracy was standing in the hall.</p><p>Vinnie opened the door immediately, smiling, expressing surprise, inviting her in. Belatedly he noticed that she was wearing what was clearly a courtroom suit, a severe black pinstripe three-piece, very no-nonsense, and she was carrying her briefcase. <i>Well, she's probably here straight from work.</i> Which made sense, except that she was over six hours early. And while she was smiling at him, her apology for her early, unannounced arrival was slightly-less-than-sincere-sounding. And the smile was—</p><p>"Not a problem," Vinnie said, offering her a seat, a drink, maybe something to eat? Tracy accepted only the seat, in the large, overstuffed chair Vinnie usually occupied. She didn't slouch in it, though; she sat as upright as if she was sitting behind a desk. Vinnie was about to sit down on the sofa when he saw that she had her briefcase balanced on her knees, and was snapping open the latches.</p><p>"You wanna go in Sonny's office, sit at his desk?" He had no idea what they were doing, but he was pretty sure she hadn't come over to show him her juggling act.</p><p>Tracy looked up at him, and for a moment Vinnie thought she was going to say no. Then she smiled. Smiled. "Sure, why not?"</p><p>At some point fairly soon after they'd moved into the apartment, Sonny had gotten himself a real office a few miles away. The time apart was better for them both. Sonny kept the office here in the apartment just because he didn't sleep much, and at three in the morning there was no reason to leave the apartment to get away from Vinnie, who was usually sound asleep. Still, the room had the feeling of desertion to it. It lacked the sizzle of energy the places Sonny spent a lot of time in seemed to have.</p><p>Tracy sat down behind the desk, and Vinnie sat across from her in the "visitor" chair, watching her open her brief case and remove a blue legal pad. There were about half a dozen pages with writing on them.  From her jacket pocket she took out a pen. "I'm really glad you agreed to see me, Vinnie," which was a strange thing to say since Vinnie had been the one to call her, to invite her for dinner. He was starting to get a bad feeling about this. "There are some things I've been wanting to talk to you about."</p><p><i>No, this isn't going to be good.</i> Vinnie forced a smile. "Shoot."</p><p>"Why did my Uncle Sonny try to kill himself?"</p><p>That was—Vinnie was not expecting that question at all, and before he had a chance to think, she added, "You weren't very clear when you called and told me he was dead."</p><p>Vinnie had no doubt that was true, he'd been three sheets to the wind when he'd made that call and he'd barely remembered it the morning after. But this was the conversation he'd expected to have with Sonny, the one he'd discovered Sonny wasn't interested in. Well, maybe this would be good, to finally have it with someone.</p><p>He started with the whole insane <i>Spy Vs. Spy</i> fiasco of Sonny's plots to bring down Patrice and Patrice's plans to destroy Sonny. "Then Sonny got this idea of marrying Theresa Baglia to consolidate his power, get the Bronx behind him—"</p><p>"Are you telling me you think the only reason he asked Theresa to marry him is so he could be Joe Baglia's son-in-law?" Tracy asked in a chilly voice.</p><p>Considering what his relationship with Sonny was now, suggesting that Sonny was only interested in Theresa for the political power she could bring him sounded pretty ugly—besides being completely untrue. "No, I'm telling you that with Patrice attacking him and trying to prove to the other families that Sonny shouldn't be running things—looking for permission to remove him one way or the other—with all that going on, he wouldn't have been thinking about getting married if there wasn't more to be gained than a wife." Before Tracy could say anything, Vinnie went on. "Look, I know he loved her—he wouldn't have asked her to marry him if he hadn't loved her, but he was fighting for his life. He had a few things on his mind, and romance wasn't a top priority."</p><p>"So he discussed this with you?"</p><p>"You mean pre-nuptial pillow talk?" Vinnie asked. Might as well get all the cards on the table. "No, there was nothing like that. He didn't really talk about her at all."</p><p>"And yet you somehow knew what he was thinking?"</p><p>Vinnie decided not to mention their more recent conversation on the subject, since it sounded kind of odd that they'd be talking about it now. Instead he shrugged, his best <i>who gives a fuck?</i> shrug, the one that managed to say <i>I don't know and I don't care </i>with no words at all. If she really wanted to know, let her try to get the information out of Sonny. This wasn't his story to tell. "Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe he was marrying Theresa because he was suddenly crazy in love with her and it was just good fortune the marriage was good politically. It doesn't make any difference. The point is, he was making a political marriage, and Patrice knew it. Royce had been trying to get an in someplace in the organization, but he wasn't having any luck, first because Sonny knew how to treat his people, and second because Royce was such a slime ball, nobody in their right mind was going to be charmed into switching sides by him. But Sonny knew what he'd been doing, so he decided we should pretend to be on the outs. That way Royce would tell Patrice, and Patrice would try to recruit me, which is what happened. Then I'd be in a position to report back to Sonny everything Patrice was planning." Vinnie rubbed his eyes. "You, uh, you wanna go sit on the balcony? It's kind'a nice out there."</p><p>Tracy shook her head. "It's a little chilly for me."</p><p>"Um. Patrice offered me a spot with him if I helped him set up Sonny, and I agreed. Only I talked to my field director—"</p><p>"Frank McPike," Tracy supplied. She'd done her homework and she knew who the players were.</p><p>"Yeah, Frank, I talked to Frank and he told me not to tell Sonny. Instead, we arranged it so the cops would show up before the hit. I'd kept seeing Mahoney talking with Patrice's guys, and I thought he was in on it, too, so the way it was supposed to go down was, we'd get Patrice and Mahoney for conspiring to kill Sonny, Sonny'd get some light time for—God, I don't even remember what anymore, Sonny'd hate me for the rest of his life, and I'd go on to another case. Only it didn't work out that way." For some reason all that regret, everything he'd been trying not to feel at the time, was trying to come out now. He wasn't going to let it.</p><p>"I didn't know it, but Sonny also had Aldo Baglia playing the same game I was. I still don't see how that worked—Patrice must'a been blinded by his own arrogance, I guess, because anybody who wasn't blind would have seen how crazy in love Theresa was with Sonny. Hell, she punched Frank when he told her there wasn't going to be a wedding—not even Aldo could've been stupid enough to think he could have betrayed Sonny and gotten away with it. Forget what his father would have done to him, Theresa would've hung him up by the balls."</p><p>Tracy nearly smiled, which made Vinnie feel a little better, though he wasn't entirely sure why.</p><p>"Anyway, Aldo told Sonny about the hit, so Sonny didn't trust me anymore, and he planned his own hit on Patrice, which of course I didn't know about. I don't know what I would've done if I had known about it, but I never got the chance to do anything; we were sitting at that dinner table, and Sonny killed him, and Aldo killed Sculissi."</p><p>For a few minutes they just sat there looking at each other. Did it matter to Tracy that her uncle had murdered someone? If it did, it didn't show in her face. "I was trying to help him," Vinnie said, and heard how forlorn he sounded, tried to control it. "If he'd been honest with me, I might'a been able to keep him from killing Patrice. Yeah, he would'a done a little prison time, but nothing major, and considering who he is and how much money he's got, it would'a been nothin' like the kind'a time I did. If he'd been honest with me—I could have talked him out of it, I could always talk him out of everything—"</p><p>"If only he'd been <b>honest</b> with you." Tracy had been letting him talk, hang himself with his own words, but now she cut into his confession.</p><p>And Vinnie realized he'd been giving his confession to the wrong person. It didn't seem like there <b>was</b> a right person. Sonny wasn't going to forgive him because Sonny didn't forgive, he just—rephrased the question, changed the rules of the game. Don't forgive, certainly don't forget, but ignore? Ignoring what he didn't want to see was practically Sonny's personal credo. If you needed forgiveness, you'd have to go someplace else. Or maybe just learn to live without.</p><p>"If only <b>he'd</b> been honest with <b>you</b>," she repeated, throwing the emphasis a little differently, making the words sharper. "That was the problem?"</p><p>Those words were supposed to cut him, but she was an amateur, and Vinnie had been living with a pro these last few years. Vinnie couldn't remember how many arguments they'd had where Sonny had taken shots at his honor. Sonny might not want to talk about the past, but that never kept him from using it as a weapon against Vinnie.</p><p>"Yeah, if he'd been honest with me," Vinnie repeated. "But if you want to go that route, if he—and your father—hadn't been involved in organized crime, I wouldn't have been investigating them in the first place. Is that really what you came here to talk about?"</p><p>"We'll get to that later," she promised. "I still don't know why he tried to kill himself."</p><p>"You didn't let me finish," Vinnie said, using the words to help disengage from her hostility. "Before the locals could get there to arrest everyone, Sonny found out about me being a cop and took off in a stolen car. I went after him. His car was low on gas—" Vinnie had to remind himself that this is what had happened. He had never known why they had been in the Rialto, and it hadn't been easy to get Sonny to tell him, and he prized that bit of information. "So Sonny drove to a movie theatre he knew, planning on going in one way and out the other and grabbing the truck I was driving. Pretty good plan, except that we got locked inside." <i>And then I broke Sonny's heart, and Sonny broke mine, and there's nothing in the world that'll ever make me tell you about that.</i></p><p>But there were other things he would tell her, including how, when the cops were breaking down the door, Sonny put his hand in the fusebox to avoid arrest, trial, imprisonment, the death penalty.</p><p>"He thought he'd get the death penalty for killing Paul Patrice?" Tracy asked with contemptuous disbelief. "Are you kidding me?"</p><p>That was the lawyer in her talking, and she was right. Any good attorney could have gotten Sonny—well, maybe not off, but certainly a better deal than death. And getting him off wasn't completely out of the question. "Too bad you weren't there," Vinnie said. "He could have used some solid legal advice, after forty-eight hours with no sleep, and twenty-four with nothing to eat and I don't know how much to drink."</p><p>"And what were you doing?" Tracy asked.</p><p>Vinnie thought about telling her he was dealing with the same things, plus a concussion Sonny gave him pounding his head on the floor. He thought about telling her that he'd shoved Sonny into the fusebox. He smiled at her and asked if she wanted a glass of water. She turned him down. "Is that all you wanted to know?" Vinnie asked, trying to keep his voice inflectionless.</p><p>Tracy sort of half-laughed, unsettlingly like her uncle, in that same contemptuous way he had of blowing you off without saying a word. She made some notes, then flipped to the next page in her notebook. "Three years ago, your stepfather showed up at my office and told me he wanted to see my uncle. You were sick, you needed him, he had to go. And just like, my uncle is gone. For two years he's gone, and I knew, even though he never said so, that your stepfather wanted to kill him, that's he was in danger, and that it was your fault—"</p><p>"My fault?" Vinnie asked. "What the hell are you talking about?"</p><p>Tracy leaned back in Sonny's chair—it was the kind of chair that leaned back. "Not your fault?" she asked. "You're going to have to explain that."</p><p><i>I don't gotta explain a damn thing, </i>Vinnie thought as he began to explain. "You want an explanation? I'll tell you what I remember." He thought about it, about what he really did remember, about what he was willing to tell her. "I'd been very sick, I was out of my mind, and I—was hallucinating Sonny. 'Course, I didn't know I was hallucinating. Rudy didn't know what to do, so he figured that getting Sonny there would snap me out of it." Vinnie shrugged. "I couldn't tell the difference. Hell, I'm still not sure when he really got there. I guess it was when Rudy started talking to him, after telling me over and over he wasn't there. Confused the hell out of me. You understand, I can't swear to most of this."</p><p>"Of course." If there was sarcasm in her voice, Vinnie couldn't detect it.</p><p>He would have liked to ask how Sonny reacted when Rudy talked to him, but they weren't sharing information. He was donating blood, and she was drinking it. "He woke me up in the middle of the night—"</p><p>"My uncle?" Tracy asked.</p><p>"That's who we're talking about. He told me to put on my shoes and come with him, and I did. He'd bought back my car from the guy Rudy'd sold it to, and we drove away in it. And we kept on driving." Vinnie tried not to grin, but he couldn't help it. In his mind, Sonny's lunatic idea of running away with him in the middle of the night was the clearest declaration of love he could have made. He is really nuts</p><p>Tracy was looking at her notepad and he'd managed to get his face appropriately serious again before she looked up. "What made you decide to use my uncle to help you get away from your stepfather?"</p><p>That question was so crazy, Vinnie couldn't figure out how the hell to answer it. He rubbed his eyes. "You seriously think I planned—what? When did this plan start? When Rudy went to get Sonny?" Vinnie shook his head, unable to wrap his brain around what she was asking. "What the hell makes you think I planned—I wasn't capable of planning anything!"</p><p>She held up her notebook, read, "'If he had been honest with me, I could have talked him out of it. I could always talk him out of everything.'" She looked up from her notebook, smiling that not-friendly smile. "Didn't you just say that? And isn't it reasonable to believe that if you could talk him<b> out</b> of anything, you could talk him <b>into</b> anything as well?" Tracy leaned across the desk. "The whole time you and my uncle were in hiding, he called me once a week. Did you know that?"</p><p>Vinnie didn't say anything—it wasn't a real question—and he didn't laugh. He felt so sorry for her, for her need to have Sonny love her best. <i>You are so much like him.</i> Vinnie didn't say that, either.</p><p>"And when he called, I would ask him what was going on, what plans he had, and do you know what he'd tell me?"</p><p>Vinnie couldn't wait to hear this. He shook his head, biting down hard on his bottom lip.</p><p>"'Don't worry about it. Everything's under control. Vinnie's real smart.'" Sonny was strong in her voice.</p><p>Vinnie felt simultaneously like laughing and screaming with frustration. <i> Jesus Christ, Sonny, you really are out of your mind!</i> Vinnie suppressed the urge to ask just what his being real smart was supposed to have done for their situation—particularly since they never talked about it, and Vinnie never talked to Rudy. <i>You handle everything, but when your niece asks what's going on, what do you do? You tell her I'm smart, like I'm in charge or something. No wonder she hates me.</i></p><p>"You have nothing to say to that?" Tracy asked.</p><p>Vinnie shrugged. "Your uncle is a lunatic. I'd'a thought your little conversation the other night would've clued you in on that, if you'd somehow managed to miss it for the last—how old are you now?"</p><p>Tracy didn't answer, but then, Vinnie hadn't expected her to. Apparently this denial-ignore-move on thing was genetic. She didn't have an answer, so she was moving on.</p><p>She was looking at her notebook, and Vinnie was thinking. <i>Sonny once told Rudy he had prior claim on me. Maybe that should have bothered me, probably it should have, but what I always thought of was the stories of those richer-than-God guys who owned stolen pieces of art they could never put on display. But they loved these things so much, they just had to have them, and they'd spend time alone in their secret vaults with their treasures. If Sonny's acquisitiveness makes me feel like a possession, at least I felt like a piece of art, which is better than feeling like a piece of ass, right?</i></p><p>
  <i>Yeah, and he doesn't try to make me live in a safety deposit box. That Sonny's a real mensch.</i>
</p><p>Vinnie noticed that Tracy was just sitting there, looking at him. He almost asked again if they were through, but of course they weren't. When she saw she had Vinnie's attention again, Tracy turned to the next page in her notebook.</p><p>"The night l caught you sneaking around in my father's office, what were you hoping to find?"</p><p>For a second Vinnie considered demurring, trying to make the truth easier to hear, or flat-out lying. Instead he said, "I was looking for proof that your father murdered Stan Dermott."</p><p>"What?" This wasn't at all what she had been expecting.</p><p>"Stan Dermott. He was an OCB field director, and my training officer. Your father shot him."</p><p>"Why would—what makes you think my father—what are you talking about?" Clearly she hadn't been prepared for this.</p><p>"Stan was about to testify against him."</p><p>"So you think that my father—"</p><p>He cut her off. "Yeah, it was a reasonable assumption, since Stan didn't have anything else big on his plate. He was about to retire, move to Florida. And it turned out to be true, Tony Greco obligingly copped to it after he found out I was a fed."</p><p>"Tony told you that my father killed someone?" Again she sounded like Sonny when she said that, and Vinnie had to bite his lip, hard, to keep from smiling.</p><p>"Yeah, Tony told me that, Tony bragged about it because he figured it was safe, since he was about to shoot me in the head."</p><p>Tracy's face was stark white, and Vinnie felt a little bad about what he was doing, but she'd started it, and that was childish, but it was also true. Hardball was tough on both sides of the game.</p><p>He waited until some of the color had come back to her face before asking, "Was there anything else?"</p><p>That seemed to piss her off, which was good. It got her back in the game. She looked at her notebook. "That trick you pulled with the lighter—"</p><p>"Oh, you want me to tell you about that?"</p><p>"Yes, I want you to tell me about that. It's something they taught you at Quantico, isn't it?</p><p>Vinnie's chair wasn't the kind that leaned back, but he tipped it back anyway, the way he'd used to do when he wanted to piss off nuns or cops or whoever. "Quantico? No, I got it from watching <i>Starsky &amp; Hutch,</i> only I tailored it a little. I got an old cigarette lighter and had it engraved."</p><p>"It wasn't even a present from your father?" She sounded disappointed in him.</p><p>"My father wouldn't have given me a cigarette lighter, he didn't want me smoking."</p><p>Tracy wrote something on the pad. Vinnie couldn't imagine what he'd said that she could possibly want to write down—and quote back to him later?—but he noticed she was using a silver Moka pen Vinnie would have bet was a present Sonny.  Somewhere in the apartment Vinnie had a red one with gold trim, and Sonny carried a black one. They each cost about three hundred bucks, and Sonny had bought the one he carried, and the one Vinnie couldn't find, two Christmases ago. Maybe Moka had had a three-for deal.</p><p>"And when I caught you, you asked me to go for a walk with you to keep me from thinking about it too much." Her tone was businesslike, but she was staring hard at the notebook.</p><p>"Tracy. I asked you to go for a walk with me because I was fresh out of prison and you were a pretty girl in a party dress. It wasn't part of my job—you think I wanted your father and uncle on my back about you?"</p><p>"So you weren't trying to—" She stopped and didn't go on.</p><p><i>Trying to what? Put the make on you? Get information from you?</i> "I wasn't trying to anything except spend a little time with a pretty girl."</p><p>"There isn't any point trying to charm me now." Her tone was curt.</p><p>"I'm not trying to charm you."</p><p>The look she gave him called him a liar.</p><p>Vinnie sighed and pushed his chair back a little more. He used to be good at this. He hoped he still was. "I wasn't trying to charm you then, either. You were the one who asked me to take you to a party."</p><p>She blushed, and changed the subject. "I want you to tell me what happened the day my father died."</p><p>"We went to meet with Sykes about the guns—" Vinnie began.</p><p>"What?"</p><p>"Oh, you don't know about any of that? OK, here's the quick version. There were guys moving guns through Greco's Marine, and Sonny and your father didn't know anything about it. Only Sonny was getting wise to it, so Tony killed the guy he'd been dealing with, figuring with him gone, he was safe. Except here I come along, trying to get in good, and Tony tries to pin the guy's death on me. He's in deep trouble, he hasn't ponied up his cut, so I look tailor made for his purposes. Only I landed the job of helping to bury the body, and I found a receipt for the motel the guy was staying at, I went there and talked to the woman who was staying with him. And then I told Sonny about it. Sonny arranges a meet with the Sykes, the guy who was buying the guns. Everybody was in a bad mood. Your father and Sonny were pissed off because of the money they hadn't been paid, Sykes and his people were pissed because they had paid. You got all that?"</p><p>"Yes." Her voice was tight and small, a little round stone. "Go on."</p><p>"Negotiations were going on, and I heard something in the next room. Tony told me to go take a look. I don't know if he knew what they had planned, or if he was just crossing his fingers and hoping nobody caught on to what he'd done. But in the room next door I found a couple more of Sykes's guys, with guns. They weren't expecting anybody, so I had the drop on them, until the shooting next door started. They got away. When I got out of the room, I found Cal dead on the stairs, your father dead in the motel room, Sonny bleeding from the chest, and Tony leaning against the wall, bleeding. Your father had been shot in the head. I called for an ambulance, then I did what I could to stop Sonny's bleeding."</p><p>"You're sure he was dead? My father?"</p><p><i>Did you kill my father by the sin of omission? </i>her question asked. Vinnie had asked himself that same question, and had absolved himself only when Frank told him the coroner said that Dave Steelgrave had died instantly. "Tracy. I'm sure he had a bullet hole in his head and I couldn't find a pulse and he didn't seem to be breathing. And maybe more importantly, I knew the kind of guns I saw Sykes's people carrying as they were leaving, and that the hole I saw in your father's head was the entrance wound, so I had a pretty good idea what the back of his head looked like—" Tracy's face was losing its color again. That was just too damn bad, she'd asked for this information. "I didn't know he was dead—you might've heard, I'm not your best choice in making that determination—"</p><p>"Are you trying to be offensive?"</p><p>"No, I'm just trying not to be charming." He rocked his chair a little, back and forth.</p><p>"You don't have to try that hard." She was staring at her notepad again.</p><p><i>You wanna help me out and tell your uncle that? </i> "What else've you got there?"</p><p>Tracy checked something off. "Why did my uncle hire you?"</p><p>I'm not falling into that trap. "You'd have to ask him that, he never told me."</p><p>"I have asked him, and now I'm asking you."</p><p>"To compare our answers?"</p><p>"If you like."</p><p>She bluffed well, and if Vinnie didn't know better, he might've believed her. But if she'd asked Sonny why he hired Vinnie, the only answer she'd have gotten to compare was a "mind your own business" followed by a lot of silence. Vinnie knew that because he had asked Sonny, and hadn't even gotten the "mind your own business," just the silence.</p><p>"I don't know what to tell you. My best guess is he hired me because I could've beat the hell out of him if I'd wanted to and I was smart enough not to do it."</p><p>"That's not what my father said. He said you lost that fight."</p><p>"Yeah, I threw that fight and if your father had known shit about boxing, he'd have realized that. Sonny did, and that's probably why he hired me."</p><p>Her eyes had gotten flinty when he'd said that about her father, and she'd started making notes again. Vinnie was beginning to suspect it was simply to make him uncomfortable. She was probably very good in a courtroom.</p><p>"You sure you don't want something to drink?" Vinnie asked her, rocking his chair forward so all four legs were on the floor, and getting up. "I could use some water." What he'd really like was a beer, but he didn't think that would be very smart.</p><p>"Are you nervous?" Tracy asked sweetly.</p><p>"No, I'm thirsty." And he left the room.</p><p>When he came back, before he could even sit down, she asked him, "When did your relationship with my uncle start?"</p><p><i>My uncle—every time she mentions Sonny, it's 'my uncle.' Very possessive, and something I can't very well counter with—what, 'my lover?' Yeah, right. </i> Not answering, Vinnie took a sip from the blue metal glass he'd filled with ice water. He'd bought these glasses—a whole set of aluminum tumblers, one in every shade of the rainbow—because he remembered being enthralled with a set Mrs. Eiser down the street had had. He'd liked the way the glass itself had seemed so cool on a hot day, and the blue one was his favorite, for its added coolness. "Which relationship? We have a number of relationships." He set the glass on the edge of Sonny's desk.</p><p>"I think you know the answer to that question."</p><p>"Would you advise a client to answer a question only the person who asks it understands?"</p><p>"I'm not your lawyer, and you're not on trial here."</p><p>"Oh, yeah, I'm on trial here. But you got yourself a moot court."</p><p>Tracy really didn't like that. Vinnie could see it in her eyes, though she didn't say anything. He shrugged and drank some water. "Well, I started driving for him in January of eighty-seven. I started taking care of his car when he bought it when we moved here. I—"</p><p>"That's not what I'm talking about."</p><p>Vinnie suppressed the urge to tell her he'd sucked Sonny's dick for the first time a little over four years ago, which seemed really late in the game, considering. "Do you really think I'm going to tell you something Sonny doesn't know about me? I've been living in his pocket all this time, nearly always sleeping in the same room with him. What do you think I could possibly be hiding from him?"</p><p>"He believes you when he shouldn't. I won't do that."</p><p>"No, I'm guessing you won't believe me when you should, and so what? What do you think you can tell him that would make a difference? That I'm a communist or a werewolf or something?" That had been Sonny's whacko accusation, long ago and far away.</p><p>She didn't smile. "That you're a federal agent."</p><p>"Sonny already knows that, you know."</p><p>"And your agenda? Does he know that?"</p><p>"Tracy, I don't have an agenda. I'm not a cop anymore, I haven't been since I went through El Salvadoran detox. Believe me, a few months in one of their programs'll clean everything outta your system except a nicotine habit."</p><p>"El Salvador—what were you doing in El Salvador?"</p><p>"Being tortured," Vinnie said, and took a sip of water. "I thought Rudy told you."</p><p>"He said you were abroad, as though you'd been touring Europe."</p><p>"Well, it wasn't like that. I got grabbed out of my own home and taken to El Salvador, which I'll tell you, puts an end to your career as a federal investigator. So I'm not a cop anymore." He drank some more of his water while Tracy just stared at him. "We about done here?"</p><p>That snapped her back into focus again. She looked down at her pad. "What can you tell me about my cousin Lorenzo's death?"</p><p>Vinnie hadn't been expecting that one. "Well, he was killed by a guy named Tony San Martano, who had escaped from a hospital for the criminally insane in Palermo."</p><p>"Are you sure about that?"</p><p>"Which part?" Vinnie tipped his chair back again. "Tony San Martano had definitely escaped from the hospital, I am sure about that. Whether or not he killed your cousin Lorenzo—it's true, we have no eye witnesses, but he did have all of Lorenzo's I.D. and clothes, and he was pretending to be him, and when you add that to his being a homicidal maniac—I admit, it's circumstantial, but it's a pretty solid case."</p><p>"There was no confession?" Tracy asked, writing on her legal pad.</p><p>Vinnie just blinked at her. "I don't think so."</p><p>She looked up, as if disturbed by his answer. "You don't think so? You aren't sure?"</p><p>"Well, if he confessed, it was right before I shot him, and to be honest, I was thinking about other things."</p><p>"Such as?" Tracy repeated, eyebrows raised. "Something more important?" She sounded both exactly like every lawyer he'd ever talked to, and amazingly like Sonny, when Sonny was trying to get him to answer some question that only made sense inside Sonny's head.</p><p><i>Sonny sounds like a lawyer when he wants answers. He moves like a lawyer, too. I gotta ask him if he used to watch </i>Perry Mason<i> as a kid—</i></p><p>"Vinnie?" Her let's not keep the jury waiting tone made Vinnie half-laugh.</p><p>"Such as, he had just raped my girlfriend, he was threatening to kill me—" Her single-mindedness was so much like her uncle's, he wanted to tell her there really were other things in the world of more importance than her agenda. But Vinnie was pretty sure she knew that, that she was doing this deliberately. None of this was really about the past, it was about the present, and his future with—or maybe without—Sonny. "I wasn't thinking about giving him the third degree, I was thinking about neutralizing him."</p><p>"In other words, killing him."</p><p>"That's what it took. I'm not sorry he's dead. Are you? He killed your cousin, after all." And before she could answer, "Your uncle's damn sure not sorry he's dead, he practically fucking pinned a medal on my chest for it." <i>Gave me a nice dead guy with a red bow for my birthday—apparently in this relationship it's how we say I love you. Say it with corpses. FTD's got no idea the market it's missing out on—</i></p><p>"—are you listening to me?" Tracy asked. He hadn't been, so he didn't bother to answer, but he met her eyes with an <i>I am now </i>expression. "There's no question in your mind that the man you killed was responsible for Lorenzo's death?"</p><p>"None at all." Even if there had been, he wouldn't bring it up now.</p><p>Tracy wrote something on her notepad—Vinnie would swear she was writing her grocery list, that this was just a prop, something she'd learned in lawyer school. Then she opened her briefcase and took out some faxes. "What can you tell me about a man named Tony deVoss?"</p><p>For a second, Vinnie thought his heart had stopped. Everything was gray around the edges, and he felt like he couldn't breathe as his brain scrambled to make sense of this question. It wasn't doing a very good job.<i> From Tony Greco to Tony San Martano to Tony deVoss—when did I choose Guys Named Tony for my category, Alex, and how do I go about switching to something easier, like Eighteenth Century Ukrainian Playwrights?</i></p><p>Instead of answering her, he let his chair fall forward, then stood up and walked out of the room, calling over his shoulder that he needed to use the can. He thought Tracy might be saying something, but he didn't care; he didn't want to think about, he didn't want to talk about Tony deVoss.</p><p>Vinnie was breathing hard. He locked himself in the bathroom and turned on the water full blast, gripping the sink as he stared into it. <i> What's she doing, knowing about him? And why just ask about deVoss? Why not Lin Melky, and Blue Lowerey? Hell, why not bring Johnny Goldfarb into it, he was one'a their creepy little satellites.  Well, that one's easy, they're not part of the category, are they, Alex? We'll get to them later.</i> He washed his face and hands, rinsed his mouth and spat in the sink, then gulped down two glasses of water, willing himself not to throw them up. <i> I don't wanna talk about Tony deVoss. Anyway, nothing happened, there's nothing to say.</i></p><p>"Are you all right?" Tracy asked when he went back into the office, but Vinnie didn't think she sounded concerned so much as predatory, that the question really meant <i>Did I find your weak spot?</i></p><p>"Yeah, fine," Vinnie said, sitting back down. "What were you asking me?"</p><p>"About Tony de—"</p><p>"I was in prison with him," Vinnie cut her off.</p><p>"It says here that you assaulted him," Tracy said, referring to one of the faxes.</p><p><i><b>I</b> assaulted <b>him</b>?</i> Vinnie nearly said the words out loud, and then he remembered. <i>Oh, yeah, I did. </i>"Yeah, that's right. Beat the crap out of him." Vinnie wished for a cigarette, but smoking in the apartment was a punishable offense, in Sonny's office was it was even more verboten, and besides, there were no ashtrays.</p><p>"It doesn't say why," Tracy said.</p><p>"They don't really care why." Vinnie saw his forgotten glass of water on Sonny's desk and picked it up, not drinking, just holding the cold, blue metal in his cold hands.</p><p>"Maybe not, but I'm interested."</p><p>"Really? OK." Vinnie's mind was still spinning, off into tangents that meant nothing, he couldn't figure out what she wanted to know, or why she wanted to know anything, and he kept trying to put together a good lie to tell her, only he couldn't figure out what he was lying about, or why he needed to lie at all, so how could he know what kind of lie to tell?</p><p>"Vinnie?" Tracy prodded.</p><p>"We got in a fight," Vinnie said, shrugged, drank some water. "I beat him up."</p><p>"That's it? What was the fight about?"</p><p>"You know how in grade school you'd fight over bullshit stuff—he gave everybody gum but me, or she cut in front of me in line? Well, prison's like that, too. Only instead of some shoving or maybe wrestling around in the dirt, you've got guys trying to kill each other. That's the only real difference—oh, yeah, and that when you're in grade school the teachers expect you to grow up and knock it off, and in prison the guards aren't much better than the prisoners."</p><p>"You're telling me that you put a man in the infirmary because he didn't bring enough gum for the whole class?"</p><p><i>Why am I telling her anything? I don't have to. What's she going to do? </i>"No, I'm not telling you anything, except what prison's like."</p><p>"Did you know that Tony deVoss is dead?"</p><p>Vinnie didn't know what to think. The first coherent thought to present itself in his mind was,<i> Oh, God, Sonny. Sonny. </i>He pushed himself still further into his smart-ass character, though it wasn't doing him much good, found a cigarette and lit it. To hell with what Sonny wanted. "Hey, don't look at me, he was alive when I walked outta prison. When'd he buy it?"</p><p>Tracy looked down at the top fax. "July twenty-ninth, nineteen eighty-seven."</p><p>"Then that slow-acting poison I gave him really was worth the money. Thanks, I feel a lot better now, I thought I'd got ripped off again."</p><p>"You think this is funny?" Tracy asked. "You think a man's death is funny?"</p><p><i>I wasn't the one laughing about Kiki Vanos—you wanna hear about Kiki Vanos? </i>But he wouldn't tell her about Kiki Vanos because she was Sonny's niece, and she loved him, and Vinnie wasn't going to interfere with that, even if he had to sit here and let her stick him with hot needles. He smoked his forbidden cigarette, drank the last of his water, let an ice cube fall into his mouth, and crunched it. "No, I don't think it's funny."</p><p>"Do you have any idea who else might have wanted him dead?" Tracy asked, holding her pen at the ready, as though she expected Vinnie to give her a name she could then pass on to the proper authorities.</p><p>"Who else? That assumes I wanted him dead myself—and you're also assuming I knew the guy well enough to know who he'd pissed off. Sorry, I didn't keep his social calendar. You got his record there?"</p><p>"Yes."</p><p>"Well, if you're so interested, that's where you should be looking. But you don't really care what happened to—" Vinnie couldn't say his name "—this guy, you're just looking for something on me, and you think this is it. So what's the scenario? Wait, I know, I got outta prison and I got in good with Sonny just so I could use my newly acquired contacts to have a guy whacked. Is that the scenario in your head? Well, I didn't, I didn't even know he was dead. You can believe that or not, I don't care." The dumb hood facade wasn't protecting him. Vinnie dropped his cigarette into his water glass. He thought he was going to be sick.</p><p>"I didn't say—"</p><p>"You didn't have to say!" Again he let his chair fall forward, this time thumping it hard on the floor, which made Tracy jump. "Jeez! You don't trust me. Well, that's all right, it doesn't make a fucking bit of difference to me if you trust me or not! You think I'm hiding things from Sonny. Sure, there're plenty of things I haven't told him, but that's mostly because Sonny doesn't want to talk about this shit, you know? If when he got home tonight, I asked him if he wanted to hear about some guy I beat up in prison, he'd look at me like I'm crazy! We don't talk about the past because he's not interested in it!" Vinnie realized he was getting a little loud, and made an effort at lowering his voice. "You think I'm hiding things from Sonny, that's one thing, but if you think I'm hiding things from <b>you</b>—well, I got news for you, Tracy, I don't gotta tell you a thing. So I'll make you a deal. You think there's something Sonny ought'a know about me that I'm keeping a secret, ask him about it. If he doesn't know the answer, and it's something he wants to know, I can assure you, he'll ask me. But if you're expecting to be part of the loop, you can forget it. It's none of your fucking business!"</p><p>She was standing now, and Vinnie realized that that was probably because he was standing, standing over her and screaming at her, which he hadn't planned—<i>but then, you didn't plan on talking about Tony deVoss either, did you?</i></p><p>Tracy was saying something, and Vinnie knew he should be listening, he'd been trying to—well, not so much to be nice, but to humor her—but he couldn't even look in her face. What had she read in those papers she had, what was she writing down to tell Sonny later?</p><p>"You want to know why you're here right now? Because Sonny told me to have a talk to you about the other night."</p><p>The look she gave him told him she knew exactly what he meant. She might've been sheltered from the business, but she knew what Sonny telling him to have a with talk her meant. "Really?" Two tight, angry syllables.</p><p>"Yeah, he told me to tell you you're crazy. In case you didn't know, that's Steelgrave for 'shut up, don't talk about it.' You should write <b>that</b> down, it's something you're going to need to know."</p><p>"And do you have any message of your own?" Tracy's voice was ice, her face pale, closed off. She started to gather up her things and that was when Vinnie snapped.</p><p>"Yeah, you don't get to keep these!" Vinnie grabbed the faxes from Tracy and ripped them up, throwing the pieces at her. He had to get her out of the apartment or he was going to slug her and then—he couldn't even imagine what would happen after that. <i>You don't want to find out,</i> he thought, jerked her briefcase away from her and slammed it shut. He took hold of her arm—not roughly, but firmly, firmly, so she couldn't get away, and pulled her through the apartment to the front door where he first threw out her briefcase, then pushed her—not hard—out after it.</p><p>For a moment he stood staring at the just-slammed door, expecting it to open again. He threw the bolt, then, afraid Tracy would start knocking, he went over to the stereo. Led Zeppelin, as loud as he could get it, if she started knocking he wouldn't hear it. The neighbors would start complaining—well, let them.</p><p>
  <i>Let them.</i>
</p><p>He started to go back to the office, but he ran into something, accidentally knocked it over, and it went crashing to the floor. He stood staring at the satisfying sound as it mingled with the music, then went back into Sonny's office</p><p>Time passed. Vinnie could tell that because the music changed, the record ended and started again and ended again. So time was passing normally, anyway. He picked up the papers he'd torn up. If he put them back together again, maybe he could find out how Sonny had killed deVoss. "Maybe he didn't do it, maybe he d—maybe he died of a heart attack, and Tracy was just fucking with my head."</p><p>Vinnie took the pieces of paper and sat down at Sonny's desk, smoothed out what he'd crumpled. The pieces went together easily, even with his hands shaking, but he couldn't seem to read the words, everything was blurry. "Am I going blind?" he asked, but he didn't really care if he was, except that he needed to know, he really needed to know if Sonny had killed deVoss. "And M—and—and the others, I gotta find out if he—and the papers won't tell me that anyway, I gotta—I gotta—"</p><p>Uncle Mike could tell him. Vinnie grabbed the phone, but what would happen if he called? And where would he call him at? The OCB had been shut down, a fact Vinnie knew because Sonny had read it to him from The Washington <i>Post, </i>from an article about a number of government agencies that had lost their funding. Sonny had read it to him with neither sympathy nor satisfaction; he was simply relaying the news.</p><p>So there was no longer either a Terranova Hardware or a private number where Vinnie could call him. There was a home number, but Vinnie didn't know it—but Information would. Vinnie picked up the receiver and dialed, but when the operator answered he started to ask for a number for Mike Terranova. Instead of correcting himself, Vinnie said he'd changed his mind, and hung up, dropping the phone on the floor. It had sounded as though the operator had asked him if he was all right, but Vinnie had no idea why she'd ask him that.</p><p>He got up from behind Sonny's desk and went into the living room. The earlier crashing sound had been satisfying, but the clumsy way he'd caused it hadn't been. He still couldn't see, the world was a blur, and he hit the wall a couple of times on his way, but he made it, and he found what he didn't know he was looking for, something medium-sized and breakable and he picked it up, blindly, picked it up and threw it against the wall, the crash becoming part of the music. It made him feel a little, it made him feel, it made him.</p><p>It made him. Better. </p><p>There was no point calling Uncle Mike, even though Uncle Mike would know, because he wasn't an OCB agent any more—he wasn't, and he wasn't either, neither of them were OCB agents any more, so there was nothing Uncle Mike could tell him. How 'bout them Mets? There wasn't even really an Uncle Mike to call, there was Dan Burroughs, and he thought Vinnie was dead. Vinnie stumbled, nearly fell over the sofa, found something else that seemed throwable, breakable. He threw it and it broke.</p><p><i>Yeah.</i> He picked up something else and threw it against the wall as hard as he could. Glass went everywhere. It was gloriously satisfying, and he looked around for something else to break, and then he thought of Sonny, smashing everything in the theatre lobby, and he sat down on the sofa. Smashing stuff didn't solve anything, and somebody had to clean up the mess, and once upon a time he had been one of those somebodies. <i>No, you weren't, you were—you thought you were some big hero. Frank had been one of the cleaner-uppers, while you were out polishing your imaginary badge.</i></p><p>Still, the principle was the same: no matter how big a mess he made, nothing was going to fix what was wrong: break all the glass, tear up all the paper, it didn't matter, it couldn't change anything— <i>There's nothing to change, nothing happened.</i> </p><p>But the hopelessness did nothing to dispel Vinnie's panic. So deVoss was dead. How could he find out about Melky and Lowerey, and why did it matter? Nothing had happened! Nothing had happened, he wasn't in denial, really nothing had happened. They'd just gotten him alone and yeah, they'd all had shivs—no, Melky and deVoss had had shivs, Blue Lowerey had had a knife. A real knife, not something else sharpened and used as a knife, but a real knife. Vinnie remembered Roger saying that anything could be a weapon. He hadn't told Roger that he already knew that, that there were guys inside who could sharpen whipped cream to a lethal point. They could probably teach Roger a thing or two. Vinnie wondered what Lowerey had done to pay for that knife. Lowerey was a<br/>
worm who had wanted to be a snake, and that's why he'd carried the knife. And he'd affiliated himself with other snakes.</p><p>Later on, back in the real world, Sid Royce had reminded Vinnie of Blue Lowerey, that sneaky, kiss-up attitude that camouflaged the heart of a viper. If there'd been any real justice in the world, Royce would have gotten to meet his doppelganger.</p><p>They'd cornered him in a deserted place, they'd threatened to cut him, they'd tried to get his pants down. Was that anything compared to the kid they'd put in the infirmary, or the two they'd rumored to have killed? It was nothing, and it made no sense for Vinnie to be this upset about something that hadn't even happened! How could anybody get this upset about something that hadn't happened? It was stupid!</p><p>The prison guard, his lifeguard inside, the one who was supposed to be keeping an eye on him was keeping an eye on him, though at something of a distance. Not that you could blame him for that; it had to be at something of a distance, he could hardly have made Vinnie is new best friend. He'd walked in when deVoss, Lowerey and Melky had had him pinned against the wall, Vinnie thinking he had asked for it because he'd beat up deVoss while Lowerey and Melky had turned tail and run because that's the kind they Were they dead too? Who had killed deVoss?</p><p>The guard had broken one of Melky's knees with his night stick, and he'd knocked Lowerey down, too. Lowerey was easy, though, Lowerey was soft and round.</p><p>Vinnie's arm hurt, his forearm just above the wrist. He looked at it, and found that a piece of glass that must have ricocheted, cutting him. Vinnie pulled out the piece of glass, trying not to cut is fingers, and took it to the kitchen and threw it in the trash, as though it was the only sharp and dangerous object in the living room, as though, because it had drawn his blood, it was more dangerous than all the other shattered glass in the living room and had to be treated with more suspicion. His arm was bleeding, and Vinnie put the wound to his mouth, sucking the blood. They'd cut his lip, Lowerey had when he'd punched him, and it had been bleeding the whole time, even after the guard came, even after it was all over, if nothing could be all over. They'd unzipped his pants pulled them down, that's as far as they'd gotten. He hadn't ended up like those kids had, torn up inside, cut up outside, trying to figure out which was which. Inside, outside, upside-down. Nothing had happened to him, except that his lip bled.</p><p>Who had killed them? Were they dead?</p><p>Sonny would know. Sonny would know, and Sonny would tell him if Vinnie had to beat the information out of him.</p><p>Vinnie could do it, Vinnie had beat the hell out of deVoss, kept him, kept them from raping some kid—or finishing what they started, anyway, which had to count for something, right? It had to count for something.</p><p>He'd been so, Vinnie had been so angry, so—it was so wrong and he was so angry that once deVoss was a whimpering pile of bleeding nothing, once he was down and it was over unless Vinnie was going to kill him—<i>why didn't I?</i>—once it was over, Vinnie had spat on him.</p><p>A guard found them—not Vinnie's guard, a different guard, one who didn't know Vinnie was OCB and Vinnie got some solitary, but he could handle it then, and it was worth it. And when he got out, deVoss and Melky and Lowerey had been looking for revenge. <i>It doesn't matter, it's not like anything happened.</i></p><p>Something broke, something big, like the little table that sat in the corner, and Vinnie figured he was the one who'd broken it, since he was the only one there. </p><p><i>How did deVoss die? How did Sonny do it? </i> This wasn't like with Kiki Vanos, where he'd thought he wanted to kill him only to find out he hadn't really. What Vinnie wanted with deVoss wasn't just that he be dead, him and Melky and Lowerey, but that Vinnie kill him, them, himself.</p><p>The guard hadn't done anything to deVoss because he hadn't had to; Vinnie had gone after him, and deVoss had—cowered. Cowered, oh, that had felt so good, watching him cower, knowing this big, tough rapist could be scared of him when it was just the two of them, no sharpened toothbrush handle evening the odds.</p><p>Vinnie had punched him twice, that was all it took, that was all he was allowed to do. And that time he would have killed him, if they had been there alone.</p><p>That time hadn't shown up in his record, or anybody else's. <i> If we all pretend it never happened, nobody has to do the paperwork.</i></p><p>Well, nothing had happened. They hadn't even gotten his pants down. But Vinnie still didn't sleep for the next week.</p><p>And Sonny had killed them for him.</p><p>If they were all dead. Tracy hadn't connected Melky and Lowerey to him because there was no record anywhere of him having anything to do with either of them, only deVoss. Maybe they weren't even dead. Vinnie really needed to know.</p><p>Vinnie heard Sonny's key in the lock, and when Sonny opened the door, Vinnie was right there to punch him in the face.</p><p>The weird thing was that Sonny didn't seem surprised. Well, maybe that made sense; he'd punched Vinnie with no warning on more than one occasion, so maybe ambush just seemed reasonable to him, maybe he was always expecting it. Whatever it seemed, he responded by pushing Vinnie away from him, watching him warily. "What's the matter with you? What's the music on so loud for?" Shooting him a warning look, Sonny went over and turned off the stereo. "Wha'd you do to the apartment?"</p><p>"You know a guy named Tony deVoss?" Vinnie asked, pushing Sonny. "Huh?" Moving toward him, pushing again. "Do you?"</p><p>Vinnie hit him again, and Sonny cuffed him. "Cut it out!" Sonny said, and he sounded sort of desperate. Sonny wasn't going to fight with him, which enraged Vinnie far more than he could have imagined it would. <i>Of course Sonny's not gonna to fight with you, why should he? You're no threat, Sonny doesn't take you seriously. And—why should he? You can't even handle your own problems, you gotta have Sonny do it for you.</i></p><p>Sonny was looking at him, eyes narrowed, which meant he was puzzled. When Vinnie pushed him a third time, he slapped Vinnie's hands away. "Cut it out! What's the matter with you?"</p><p>"I need you to tell me," Vinnie told him, because he couldn't answer Sonny's question because there wasn't anything the matter with him. <i>Yeah, you've been in here playing your stereo loud enough to deafen the dead, and you're breaking things, but nothing's the matter? </i> It was the little voice in the back of his head that sometimes sounded like Roger, and sometimes sounded like Frank.</p><p><i>Shut up,</i> he told the voice. <i> You're not helping.</i></p><p>"Tell you what?"</p><p>"If you killed them! If you killed them, I need to know!" </p><p>"Wait—them? How many guys are we talking about here?" Sonny was staying away from him, moving cautiously to avoid the broken things.</p><p>"Quit acting like you don't know what I'm talking about!" And Vinnie went for him, hitting him in the stomach. Sonny was damn well going to take him seriously! Sonny was going to hit him! You're doing this because you're crazy, right?</p><p>"Who are these guys?" Sonny asked.</p><p>"Nobody, they're nobody!" Vinnie picked up the big crystal ashtray he wasn't allowed to use for his cigarettes and threw it against the wall.</p><p>Sonny didn't even flinch. Sonny wasn't afraid Vinnie was suddenly going to go after him, Sonny wasn't trying to find something to surreptitiously turn into a weapon against him; Sonny wasn't him.</p><p>"Yeah. You think I killed three guys who don't exist. I didn't kill anybody, I don't even know who they are. You think I'm lying to you? Why would I bother? I already told you— You want me to make you a list of all the guys I ever dusted or had dusted, write it down so later on down the line if you've got any suspicions you can just refer to your list, we won't have to do this—would that make you happy?"</p><p>"I don't want to— Just shut up."</p><p>"What'd these guys do to you?" Sonny, who never wanted to talk about anything, who never asked anything about the past, now wanted to know about something that hadn't happened. </p><p>"Nothing! Nothing happened! They're nobody!" Vinnie went for him, but Sonny blocked his punch.</p><p>"Nobody," Sonny repeated, like how stupid do you think I am? "C'm'on, who's Tony deVoss?"</p><p>Vinnie tried to hit him again, and Sonny punched him in the face, which made everything so much better.</p><p>But he seemed to think that was the end of the fight, because he was talking again, asking questions Vinnie couldn't answer. </p><p>Vinnie wanted to hit him again, but that didn't seem to be working. Instead he went into the office, grabbed up a handful of the torn papers off the desk and threw them at Sonny, who had followed him. "Tony deVoss! Lin Melky! Blue Lowerey! Do you know them or not?"</p><p>"The names don't sound familiar. Who are they?" Sonny didn't even look at the papers.</p><p>"They're dead, that's who they are! Did you kill them?"</p><p>"I don't think so! What'd they do?"</p><p>"What'd they do?" Vinnie repeated. Why the fuck did Sonny keep asking him that?</p><p>"Yeah, <b>do.</b> You think I used to go around killing people for no reason? Or is this something recent, that instead of going to work, you think I'm a serial killer?"</p><p>"This isn't funny!"</p><p>Sonny was beginning to sound exasperated. "Am I laughing? I don't know what the fuck you're talking about! Who are these guys and why do you think I would have killed them?"</p><p>"Because they're dead!"</p><p>The look Sonny gave him would have been funny, if anything was funny. "Oh, come on, you gotta have more than that! You got three dead guys, so I gotta be responsible? You're kidding, right?"</p><p>Vinnie knew he wasn't making any sense, but he was afraid to think too much about it, afraid that if he did, he'd start—</p><p>"There's a lotta dead guys out there, you can't think I killed all of 'em—when would I find the time?"</p><p>He'd start—he's start— Not crying; he didn't cry anymore. Hyperventilating, maybe, or punching Sonny again. But not crying.</p><p>"Not you personally," Vinnie said. "You would have paid to have it done."</p><p>"And when was this?" Sonny was being very patient, and Vinnie wished he wouldn't, it made hitting him seem less reasonable, and Vinnie really wanted to hit him again, because maybe if he hit Sonny again, he wouldn't hyperventilate. Only the fight seemed to be over, but Vinnie wanted—he wanted the option, dammit! He didn't care about being reasonable!</p><p>So he swung on Sonny, who was still didn't seem to get it. "What the fuck are you doing—?"</p><p><i>Picking a fight! Asshole! </i> Vinnie hit him one more time, which was all it took to get his message across.</p><p>They hadn't done this in quite a while. Oh, yeah, they had their morning work-outs, the sparring sessions, but that was more about speed than punching, and there was very little actual violence. And they were followed by Sonny skipping rope, which he did amazingly well, considering everything. It always amused Vinnie to watch him.</p><p>But now Sonny was taking him seriously; Vinnie could tell by the left jab and the right cross, and they slugged each other until finally Sonny knocked him down.</p><p>Vinnie hurt all over. Sonny had been humoring him, but he hadn't been pulling his punches. He'd been fighting for real, but he'd only been doing it because Vinnie wanted him to. There had been no anger in his punches, there had been no feeling or desire to win, just<i> you want me to hit you, OK, I'll hit you.</i></p><p>When it was over, when they were bloody and bruised and exhausted, Sonny offered Vinnie his hand to help him up. That was Sonny—you could knock him down, but he wouldn't stay down for very long, no matter how much it hurt him to get up again. He wouldn't let Vinnie stay down, either, unless he was the one trying to knock him down. When Vinnie was on his feet, Sonny asked, "You gonna tell me when these guys got dusted?"</p><p>Now that it was over there was nothing left to do. but answer him. "July of eighty-seven."</p><p>There was a moment of incredulous silence. "So, about eight years ago." Sonny shook his head. "And who are these guys? Did I have a reason to want them dead? Why wouldn't I do it myself?"</p><p>"You couldn't have done it yourself."</p><p>"What's that supposed to mean?" Sonny's indignation was typical, typical.</p><p>"I mean they were in the New Jersey pen. They were lifers! You couldn't have killed them yourself, even if you'd ended up inside, you'd'a been growing tomatoes with Ivan Boesky." The reference from Sonny's memory black hole made Sonny blink at him in confusion. "Sonny, did you—I really need to know."</p><p>"Vinnie, I never heard of Tony deVoss or—who were these other guys?"</p><p>"Lin Melky. Blue Lowerey."</p><p>Sonny shook his head. "I never heard of any of them. Who were they? Besides guys you knew in prison."</p><p>"Just . . . some guys."</p><p>"Just some guys you wanted dead."</p><p>"Yeah. Just some guys I wanted dead." Vinnie didn't know what else to say. He'd never told anyone. Not even Frank. Not even Pete, in the confessional. Nobody. The only one who ever knew anything was the guard who was supposed to have been looking after him, and Vinnie had told him that if he said anything to anybody, he'd quit the program and tell them it was because he couldn't keep his mouth shut. It didn't seem like much of a threat, but it was all he had. He'd never told anybody. And he had the terrible feeling he'd been wrong, as wrong as Tracy had been, that Sonny not only wasn't responsible for these deaths, he really didn't know who they were, he really didn't know what had happened. What hadn't happened.</p><p>"And now they're dead."</p><p>"Yeah. And now they're dead." Maybe Melky and Lowerey weren't, but why complicate things?</p><p>Sonny was shaking his head, still confused by the whole thing. "How'd you find this out?"</p><p>"Tracy told me."</p><p>"How does Tracy know?"</p><p>"She doesn't know about all of them, she only knows about deVoss because he ended up in the infirmary because I beat the crap out of him. I caught him alone one time."</p><p>"Travel in a pack, huh?" Whatever questions Sonny had, he seemed to be getting the answers without Vinnie giving them to him.</p><p>Vinnie didn't want him getting the wrong ones. "Nothing happened."</p><p>"What'm I supposed to think happened?"</p><p>Sonny hadn't known, but now he was reading Vinnie, eyes flickering over him the way they flickered over the columns of type on the financial page, picking up information just the same way.</p><p>"Nothing," Vinnie said, "because nothing did."</p><p>Sonny shook his head. "And you wanted 'em dead?" He didn't say he'd have done it for Vinnie. He didn't have to, and if he had had to, his tone took care of that anyway.</p><p>"No," Vinnie said, and before Sonny could express his disbelief, "Yes, I wanted them dead, but—</p><p>"You wanted to do it yourself." There was pleasure in Sonny's words. This was something he understood, in his blood, and finding it in Vinnie—</p><p><i>I hate myself for loving you. I hate myself for loving you. </i> Vinnie didn't know why that song was going through his head. It wasn't even true. He didn't hate himself for loving Sonny, not any more.  "Yeah. I wanted to do it myself."</p><p>"But somebody else did it and you figured it was me." That wasn't a question exactly.</p><p>"I thought it might be." <i>I hoped it was, </i>which he didn't say, and which was a lie, had been a lie. Now that he knew that it hadn't been Sonny, he really did wish it had been. Who had killed them? Vinnie would never know.</p><p>"Sorry to disappoint you." Sonny didn't say anything about his disheveled state, or the mess the place was in, or Vinnie punching him, or Tracy's absence, or the lack of dinner, but Vinnie felt compelled to say something.</p><p>"There isn't any dinner."</p><p>"No kidding. Where's Tracy?"</p><p>"She left hours ago."</p><p>"How could she leave hours ago when she was only supposed to get here an hour ago?"</p><p>"She arrived early, we talked, she left early. I think she forgot about dinner."</p><p>Sonny looked at him, but he still didn't ask anything.</p><p>"I threw her out! She needs to learn to mind her own business!"</p><p>"That's what I said," Sonny sounded exasperated again. "But you wanted to try to reason with her—"</p><p>"I wanted— Are you insane?" Vinnie was ready to hit him again. "I wanted? You're the one who told me to call her, tell her she's crazy, like that was going to do any good! You know what? You're both crazy, and from now on you can talk to each other! Or don't talk to each other, I don't care, it's not my problem!"</p><p>Sonny seemed baffled by his anger. "What're you pissed at me for? You don't wanna talk to Tracy, don't, what do I care?"</p><p>Vinnie was exhausted, and he ached all over, so he didn't try to punch Sonny again, though he would have liked to.</p><p>"You hungry?" and then before Vinnie could say no, "C'm'on."</p><p>"I don't feel like going out."</p><p>"Who said anything about going out? We've got a kitchen, I'll make us some dinner. C'm'on." He took hold of the front of Vinnie's T-shirt, pulled him into the kitchen.</p><p>"I didn't buy any groceries," Vinnie said. "I was going to pick up Chinese."</p><p>Sonny was shaking his head. "Nah, not tonight. Tonight I'll make spaghetti, there's sauce in the freezer."</p><p>
  <i>Spaghetti. Comfort food. Sonny is—</i>
</p><p>"You wanna lay down for a while, while I get this ready?"</p><p>
  <i>Sonny is looking after me.</i>
</p><p>"No, I—"</p><p>"Get a hold of yourself, maybe quit crying?"</p><p><i>Crying? I'm crying?</i> Vinnie touched his face. It was wet, and his nose was running. No wonder everything was so blurry. His head hurt, too. "No."</p><p>He sat at the little kitchen table, watching Sonny cooking, watching Sonny knowing something about him he hadn't known before, knowing—</p><p>"Nothing happened," Vinnie said.</p><p>Sonny handed him a paper towel, and after Vinnie had wiped his face, handed him some mozzarella cheese. "Grate that, will you?"</p><p>"Nothing happened," Vinnie said again, knowing that it was ridiculous to keep saying that.</p><p>Sonny handed him a plate, and the grater, and didn't say anything else. That made sense, Vinnie supposed. When you lived your life denying and compartmentalizing, and you were listening to someone else do it, it wasn't something you were going to comment on.</p><p> </p><p>"Vinnie." Sonny's voice in the dark. Sometimes it felt like raw silk against his skin, rough and smooth all at the same time. "Hey, c'm'on, man, I know you're awake." They'd gone to bed right after dinner. It wasn't even dark out yet, and evening light snuck around the edges of the curtains.</p><p>Vinnie still didn't say anything, and he felt more than heard Sonny sigh.</p><p>"What happened—" Sonny stopped, then said, "I know you." And then, again, as though he was saying something else, something different, and maybe he was, "I know you."</p><p>
  <i>That's what you thought when I was working for you, </i>but Vinnie didn't say it. He wasn't trying to start another fight. For one thing, he was way too tired.
</p><p>"Yeah, sure, I got it wrong before about you being a cop," Sonny admitted as though reading Vinnie's thoughts. "Why shouldn't I? I knew you loved me."</p><p><i>Love. Where the hell had that word come from, love? And that's what confused everything, is it, not you loving me?</i> Again, Vinnie didn't say it. <i>Not you being completely blind-sided by—whatever the fuck it was you were blind-sided by about me. Yeah. Yeah. That's a brilliant rationalization you've cooked up there, Sonny. I gotta admit, I'm impressed. You didn't realize I was a cop, you never tweaked, because I loved you and that confused you. It wasn't because you were crazy in love with me, it was because I was in love with you, and I couldn't be if I was a cop. I gotta write this down somewhere.</i></p><p>"I know you." Sonny said again.</p><p>Sonny didn't say he loved Vinnie, and that was good.</p><p>Sonny put his hand on Vinnie's face. "Vinnie." His name in Sonny's mouth was a benediction. "I know you."</p>
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